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1、Four short words sum up what has lifted most successful individuals above the crowd: a little bit more.-author-dateLetter-from-Birmingham-Jail-Martin-Luther-King全文Letter-from-Birmingham-Jail-Martin-Luther-King全文Keep your patience and read on. Im sure youll learn a lot from Martin Luther King.Backgro
2、und: King organized demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. Then King was arrested, and while he was in jail, eight white Alabama clergymen issued a public statement deploring the demonstrations as “unwise and untimely”. King thus wrote a letter to respond.ContentsP1-P2 the public statementw
3、ritten by eight Alabama clergymenP3-the end Kings responding letterThe following is the public statementdirected to Martin Luther King, Jr., by eight Alabama clergymenWe the undersigned clergymen are among those who, in January, issued an appeal for law and order and common sense, in dealing with ra
4、cial problems in Alabama. We expressed understanding that honest convictions in racial matters could properly be pursued in the courts, but urged that decisions of those courts should in the meantime be peacefully obeyed. Since that time there had been some evidence of increased forbearance and a wi
5、llingness to face facts. Responsible citizens have undertaken to work on various problems which cause racial friction and unrest. In Birmingham, recent public events have given indication that we all have opportunity for a new constructive and realistic approach to racial problems. However, we are n
6、ow confronted by a series of demonstrations by some of our Negro citizens, directed and led in part by outsiders. We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely. We agree rathe
7、r with certain local Negro leadership which has called for honest and open negotiation of racial issues in our area. And we believe this kind of facing of issues can best be accomplished by citizens of our own metropolitan area, white and Negro, meeting with their knowledge and experience of the loc
8、al situation. All of us need to face that responsibility and find proper channels for its accomplishment. Just as we formerly pointed out that hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions, we also point out that such actions as incite to hatred and violence, however
9、 technically peaceful those actions may be, have not contributed to the resolution of our local problems. We do not believe that these days of new hope are days when extreme measures are justified in Birmingham. We commend the community as a whole, and the local news media and law enforcement offici
10、als in particular, on the calm manner in which these demonstrations have been handled. We urge the public to continue to show restraint should the demonstrations continue, and the law enforcement officials to remain calm and continue to protect our city from violence. We further strongly urge our ow
11、n Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our whi
12、te and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense. Bishop C.C.J. Carpenter, D.D., LL.D., Episcopalian Bishop of Alabama Bishop Joseph A. Durick, D.D., Auxiliary Bishop, Roman Catholic Diocese of Mobile, BirminghamRabbi Milton L. Grafman, Temple Emanu-El, Birmingham,
13、AlabamaBishop Paul Hardin, Methodist Bishop of the Alabama-West Florida ConferenceBishop Nolan B. Harmon, Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the Methodist ChurchRev. George M. Murray, D.D., LL.D, Bishop Coadjutor, Episcopal Diocese of AlabamaRev. Edward V. Ramage, Moderator, Synod of the Alab
14、ama Presbyterian Church in the United StatesRev. Earl Stallings, Pastor, First Baptist Church, Birmingham, AlabamaApril 12, 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail King, Jr.16 April 1963My Dear Fellow Clergymen:While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my
15、present activities unwise and untimely. Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for co
16、nstructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced b
17、y the view which argues against outsiders coming in. I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South,
18、 and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed nece
19、ssary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets o
20、f the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their thus saith the Lord far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry th
21、e gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere i
22、s a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial outside agitator idea. Anyone who lives inside the United
23、States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want t
24、o rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the citys white power structure left the Negro community
25、with no alternative.In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice e
26、ngulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than
27、 in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with l
28、eaders of Birminghams economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants-for example, to remove the stores humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for H
29、uman Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained. As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappo
30、intment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self pu
31、rification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: Are you able to accept blows without retaliating? Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail? We decided to schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this
32、 is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.Then it occurred to us that Birminghams mayoral election was
33、 coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene Bull Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run off, we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run off so that the dem
34、onstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct action program could be delayed no longer.You may well ask: Why direct a
35、ction? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isnt negotiation a better path? You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused
36、to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly
37、 opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative an
38、alysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to creat
39、e a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.One of the basic points in your statement is
40、 that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: Why didnt you give the new city administration time to act? The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, befo
41、re it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Bou
42、twell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lam
43、entably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.We know through painful ex
44、perience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was well timed in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the wor
45、d Wait! It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This Wait has almost always meant Never. We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that justice too long delayed is justice denied.We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given right
46、s. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, Wait. But wh
47、en you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an
48、airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she cant go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you ha